


a world alone

by ultmyouimina



Category: TWICE (Band)
Genre: F/F, Time Travel
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-12-17
Updated: 2020-12-17
Packaged: 2021-03-10 17:55:40
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,921
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28131270
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ultmyouimina/pseuds/ultmyouimina
Summary: Sana and Nayeon on opposite sides of the Time War, and the letters they leave.
Relationships: Im Nayeon/Minatozaki Sana
Comments: 7
Kudos: 32





	a world alone

**Author's Note:**

> this is likely not going to be 100% historically accurate so if anyone wants to humble me with facts then go for it
> 
> also, just in case it's not clear, nayeon also goes by red and sana by blue in this fic

"I won't leave you this time," Sana tells her, frowning and angry, and Nayeon's breath stutters in her throat, heart leaping, before she sighs with a touch of gentleness. "You said that the last time too."

The last time. They both knew how it ended, with Nayeon staring at Sana's retreating figure, waiting and waiting and waiting for her to turn back around. The last time, war had swept in swiftly from both sides, and so, they parted ways.

-

Moving up and down the strands, jumping from one thread to the other and watching the world in spurts of chaos, reaching in, _meddling_ , braiding them into rivers of time that converged here or diverged there or emptied into a great ocean. It is, well, a difficult thing. 

And yet, it is the only thing to be done in her line of work. _Their_ line of work. The one infallible thing they could count on was undertaking mission after mission, chasing each other's backs to turn the tides of the war in their favour.

If Nayeon is lucky, sometimes, she spots Sana on the other end of a great divide, like a distant but fixed point in the midst of all the messy work that was unravelling the past or restitching the future. Sana would smile then, when their eyes met across that long distance, if only the barest hint of it graced her face – _Mina would be watching, and Jihyo too._ The next time Nayeon blinks, Sana would be gone, already winding her way into a different strand. Perhaps she was in what would come to be present-day France, sorely out of place among the Palaeolithic humans as she presses a bare hand to the rough cave walls of Lascaux, creating a rust-coloured stencil from her fingertips to the end of her palm, leaving her mark in history. Or elsewhere, always up to something, always untwisting whatever Nayeon had fought to create.

Nayeon leaves too, never one to linger when her missions are done. She surveys the smokey rubble of what had been a Monarch's palace just an hour ago, now ruins. She would have to come back again, raze it to the ground again, once Sana took her carefully threaded strand and picked it bare. The palace would stand again, sunlight glinting off roof tiles, and Nayeon would bring it down again. That was the way they worked, the push and pull between the tide and the moon, a dance around time, but for now, a satisfied grin plays across her lips.

-

Sana can hardly remember what it's like to have her life march onwards linearly, to be able to count on time as a universally unchanging constant. Time, which should wait for no one and continue ticking forward relentlessly through the days, weeks, months, years, despite everything.

Yet, Sana finds herself a child again, shivering at the edge of the tree line after she had hauled herself out of a freezing lake and trekked barefoot through the forest. Her feet are sore, bleeding from when it had caught onto a jagged rock half-embedded in the forest floor. Her clothes were sopping wet, somehow sticking to her body yet seeming to hang heavily off it at the same time. 

She skulks around outside the manor miserably, feeling sorry for herself when the wind picks up until– _"HELLO!"_

Sana looks up. There's a girl her age dressed in fine clothing, tottering determinedly towards her as if the wind were valiantly trying to sweep her off her feet. Sana, feeling particularly childlike in this body, bites back a giggle when she sees the girl sway unsteadily before picking up speed.

"What's your name?" she asks, finally standing in front of Sana and her soaked-through clothing. 

If there was one thing imperative to the Agents' work, it was to change the flow of time while remaining untraceable. And so Sana finds a different name slipping through chattering teeth, the first to come to mind. "My name is Nayeon," she lies, relishing the feeling like warm honey on her tongue as she remembers Nayeon with delight, how she had scowled so fiercely at Sana from the other end of a gaping chasm the last time they crossed paths. (Sana had undone yet another of Nayeon's newly-built strands).

The girl beckons her in through the gates, something about being friends, talking about pneumonia and colds and fevers. Sana - _Nayeon_ \- follows.

-

"Funny thing," Jihyo says smoothly, the tone of her voice making Nayeon stiffen in her chair. "We registered a change in strand 88."

Nayeon's interest piques. She peers over at the tablet Jihyo has in her hand, staring at what looks to be an old painting.

Her breath catches.

There, in faded colours yet beautiful as ever, is Sana, looking about twenty. Nayeon's eyes trace every brushstroke of oil paint on canvas where Sana's image had been made. The slope of her nose. Cheeks fuller than she remembered. Her eyes, wide and bright. A slender hand resting gently on the shoulder of another girl her age. A swell of something green rises like bile to her throat, but she sets it aside. Nayeon drinks in the sight of Sana, greedy and hungry and yearning _._

It must have been decades since she had caught even the barest glimpse of Sana. She had been busy with her fair shares of exploits, toppling empires and inspiring revolutions and such. Still, something hollow in her aches at the knowledge of years lost, though they meant nothing to time travellers who did not age, whose lives existed outside the grasp of time itself. More so, she ached at the absence of Sana.

"Look at the name," Jihyo says evenly. If she notices a chance in Nayeon's demeanour, her heartbeat, the breathless thrill that runs up her spine, she says nothing.

Nayeon looks, and _oh_.

_Charlotte The Inventor and her dear friend Nayeon,_ the yellowing tag read. _1488._

"It's my name," Nayeon breathes, wonder in her eyes as she looks it over again, because this meant that Sana had thought of her. Sana who had given herself a new name. Her name.

"Your _real_ name," Jihyo hisses, and Nayeon remembers with a start that no one was supposed to know it. Her commander continues hissing under her breath, "A name that should have been practically obsolete in the 15th century. In England, no less. If you are compromised, _Red,_ I shall see to it that–"

"I'm not," Nayeon cuts in, snapping to attention at the thought of just how much Jihyo was capable of. How swift and merciless she could be when cutting out the rotten parts of her network, no matter how useful. "I– I haven't been compromised," she says after taking a deep breath, a very human thing to do – deep breaths to calm her nerves. "I've never seen this girl before. You know my loyalty does not waver."

Her commander's eyes narrow. "So this was a coincidence then," Jihyo supplies, doling out a reluctant second chance, eyes hard and distrusting.

Nayeon nods, and breathes.

-

There's red everywhere Sana looks. 

Her stint as Nayeon ended five months ago, having done her part in nurturing the little girl's curious mind through to adulthood, the one who had ushered a shivering Sana through the gates decades ago. Sana, in return, pulled her out of a snowbank years later. The girl went on to create the first microscope a whole century before the Janssens did, which she would have done if not for hypothermia taking her life in the Original Timeline. With the invention ahead of its time and birthed amidst a period of struggle, humanity took great strides forward in the name of science, sending ripples downthread. Shockwaves that the agency was sure to notice, that tipped the scales in favour of Garden's war efforts.

Back to the red. It comes to her now, on her fingers that come away bloody after a press to the scrape on her knee. It had been a particularly nasty fall, tumbling over an exposed root that jutted thickly from the ground.

Red was the colour of Nayeon, of the way something seemed to burn inside of her and behind her eyes, of the flush on her cheeks, the swell of her lips, her skin after hours in the sun, warm to the touch. Sana missed her terribly, and so she began to write, fighting back a smile as she did. When she was done, after the sun had set scarlet-purple over the warm earth, she caught a horned owl off its perch, ignoring its indignant flapping of wings, and forced open its beak.

-

Nayeon stumbles upstream of the river for a drink, searching for a point where the water turns clear instead of running murky with sediment. She almost trips up on a tree root in the process. It's long and serpentine, cleverly disguised among tall grass, protruding from the ground as if in search of something. Still, she catches herself, palms stinging as it scrapes shallowly along the rocks dotting the riverbank.

There's a spot on the riverbank where it looks like someone had slept the night, the grass flattened in the curve of a human-shaped body pressing into itself for warmth. Nayeon looks around and comes up empty. 

She's furious all of a sudden, certain that this thing, this human indentation left in the grass, had been responsible for her failure. Her failure, earlier today, meant that when she walked into the house of a man she was supposed to kill, it was empty. It meant that she would report back to the Agency with her head down.

Nayeon stalks forward, hotheaded, through the grass. Her fingers twitch, aching to close around the throat of– of–

An owl falls from its branch, brown and grey and flapping weakly in the grass. Nayeon doesn't need a second look to see the poison working its way through the bird's system. She kneels by it, mercifully ends its suffering, then pries open its beak to see what had poisoned the poor thing. A little blue pellet falls out, just larger than a grain of rice, and Nayeon throws her head back to laugh throatily. 

She settles back against a tree, rolling the pellet between her fingers and feeling its almost imperceptible markings. She laughs again, rich, and crushes the blue thing between her teeth. 

A letter. _Of course_ , a letter.

-

Dear Red Sky at Morning,

Maybe the owl would make a great dinner if you haven't had any. Defeat is a bitter, gut-twisting companion, is it not?

I'll apologise, but we both know I wouldn't mean it. The man you sought to kill is important to Garden's plans. We are, lovers or not, friends or not, in a war after all. I answer to my superiors the way you'd answer yours. 

Did you see the work I'd done in Strand 88 England? It thrilled me to have your name on my tongue always. _Nayeon, Nayeon, Nayeon,_ slipping past my lips as smooth as melted butter. Though I'm sure the Agency must have raised their eyebrows at that.

Nevertheless, it was an intimate thing, your name in my mouth. 

Does the Agency teach you about intimacy? It's warm and splendid. 

I would like to share an intimate moment with you, nothing like the roles we play before we snap a man's neck. No, there's more to it than that.

I want to tell you about the things I see in you, how your careful hands have never fallen short of impressive work, how I long to be in a room with you. I need not tell you that I love you, but I want to be in a room with you. To peel an orange and let the smell fill the air. To share it with you. 

I must go now, before you arrive all flustered and angry and red (ha!) in the face, but tell me about your adventures. I missed our correspondence, and you, terribly.

Love always, 

Blue

-

Nayeon's armor itches. She moves under the cover of night, stealing away from the camp as silently as she can. Her feet would leave prints, sure, but it would be written off as nothing more than a defected soldier, perhaps a traitorous one setting off to warn the other side. It didn't matter, the Mongols were already going to win regardless, and Nayeon was uninterested in rewriting this part of history. She just needed to save one person. 

She reaches her target before sunrise, rouses her with a harsh shake, and drags her sleep-addled body to where she knows Momo will be waiting.

"You usually do your missions alone," Momo comments, not quite a question but she lets curiosity slip into her voice, brows raised as she takes the hysterical woman into custody and delivers a hard press to the vagus nerve. The woman slumps forward unconscious. Nayeon waves away her concern. Agents did not have friends in their factions, not particularly, but Momo was the closest thing she had to one. A companion she'd greet between strands. "I have business to attend to," she says, already turning back. "Make sure she reaches China."

She leaves Momo at the outskirts of the city, retracing her steps through alleyways and small streets, back to the house she had just broken into. Now, dawn breaks across the tops of buildings, sunlight spilling through dirtied windows. She hunts around what she thinks is the kitchen, finds a quern to grind wheat into flour, what _smells_ like yeast, salt, and a wooden pail half-filled with stagnant water. 

There's an art to breadmaking, Nayeon would know. She had, after all, been the one to lure an Egyptian man away from his dough, kept him busy for hours as it baked and rose in the scorching sun to become bread. So there was an art, she knew, as she moved downthread to catalyse the discovery of using fermented dough for bread (Not so much a mission as personal indulgence). Unfortunately, she would have no time for such art now. 

She finds coals to burn in the small clay oven shaped like a mushroom head, fire licking and warming its insides as she stretches and kneads dough with her hands. When she was satisfied, sure that each letter had been painstakingly etched, she raked out the remains of the coals, and placed her dough on the heated clay. 

At midday, five hours before the troops would sweep into the city, Nayeon leaves. Her bread heats slowly in the oven, rising and rising.

-

Sana stands in coal ash, scattered by wind across the floor of an empty house. If she were the petulant child she was eons ago, she would have folded her arms over her chest, stomped her foot even, maybe threw herself onto the floor and kicked her legs out ferociously. 

Now, her lip curls with excitement. There was something breathtaking, something invigorating about being bested by Nayeon. Something in her muscles that wished to pounce forward, reach into the strands, searching, to fall into whatever life Nayeon was leading now, to pin her up against the closest wall and take her victory by hand. But this was a game they played in secret, a cat-and-mouse chase, one hand closing around the ghost of another long gone in time. 

Sana moves towards an oven instead, where a gift sits atop warm clay. She crosses her legs on the floor, hungrily picking apart the bread with her teeth. 

-

My Periwinkle, 

Maybe the bread would make a great lunch if you haven't had any. Defeat is a bitter, gut-twisting companion, is it not?

How would you have done it? Killed her with a hand wrapped around the neck? Drawn your dagger? Poison? No matter, I got here first. Perhaps you should not leave a trail of breadcrumbs in the threads the way you do, and the Agency would not find you this predictable. But I've said too much. We are at war, dearest.

Truth be told, periwinkles have always looked more like a pale purple to me than blue. Am I colour blind? I'd hope not. I like to see the colours of you where I go. I'm lucky the sky reaches wide, it is comforting to think of blue overhead whether I'm upthread or down. I've travelled to strand 9863 once, and intercepted the mission to Jupiter's moon Europa. Space was lonely that way, not a shred of blue in sight. Sometimes I wished to reach out, to catch a corner of the universe and pull. Would I have uncovered a deep blue beneath? Would I have seen you?

I digress. Space is cold and funny-smelling, which we've known already, but the unpleasant parts of things are always amplified up close, don't you think?

Not you though. I say that with confidence even if we've never met in person, even if I've only seen you from miles away. 

My darling Blue, my forget-me-not, I wish for the war to end, traitorous as it is to hope. 

You understand that I cannot reveal what I've done in the time you were gone in Strand 88. You will know when Garden picks up the changes and sends you to undo my budding strands. That's how it is, we build and destroy and speak in secret letters. 

Intimacy sounds nice, though surely I would have been better off without this knowledge. Another thing to yearn after, then.

Tell me, Blue, do you get lonely?

Yours,

Red

**Author's Note:**

> is it obvious that i read "this is how you lose the time war" yesterday and felt the intense need to project it onto sanayeon
> 
> anyway thank you to redacted for the book rec


End file.
